


Break Away

by LostNTheShadows



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angels, Demons, F/M, Horror, Humor, Supernatural Elements, Thriller
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-01-16
Updated: 2015-01-24
Packaged: 2018-02-21 19:22:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2479610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LostNTheShadows/pseuds/LostNTheShadows
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Molly doesn't know why the demons are after her, or why, with a touch, she can make them disappear but Castiel does. And he needs Sam and Dean to help rope in the wayward girl before the hands of Heaven get their claws in her and tear her to shreds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story is set around the Season 4/Season 5 timeline. I'm sticking to canon as much as possible but consider this a side story to those seasons. I like playing around with the characters and this section of the timeline is my favorite so I'm doing it.

Heels clacked faster against wet pavement as Molly's breath clamored out in short, ragged gasps. Sometimes it was all she heard and that was both comforting and terrifying. Was it gone? Or just gone quiet? Every swallow was like choking back shards of glass. Molly spit but there was no blood. It was only her mind doing the shredding.

A whine escaped her throat and she turned to look behind her, her hair whipping into her face, stinging her eyes. There was no one there. The street was quiet.

"Oh I'll walk to work today," Molly huffed as she kept her pace steady. "It'll do me good." She coughed. "Real freaking' smart, Mol."

She hoisted the bag strap up onto her shoulder as her heart kept pace with her feet. The blood pounded in her ears and Molly put two fingers to her temples, trying to will away the oncoming headache. Whether it was the crappy weather or premature aging, she didn't know but lately her body had been killing her. No amount of orthopedic pillows or chiropractic visits helped ebb the pain pushing at her skin. Every inch of her body rumbled with a low throb that no pain killer could quell. The frustration was starting to outweigh the hurt.

Metal clattered in a passing alley and Molly screeched as she jumped out of the way of an invisible nothing. But when she jumped, a pair of hands caught her and shoved her into the dripping dark of the cement corridor. Molly stumbled and hit the brick wall, scraping her cheek as her ankle awkwardly caught her. Pain shot up into her core and Molly leaned into the wall for support, crawling over onto her back to face her assailant.

At first the alley was a blur of shadows but then the pinky streak of a face invaded the dark and her eyes started to focus. With each blink the image sharpened and the stranger came into view. A man. He could have been anyone except Molly could see his face. His real face. Horrifying. Like something dredged from the pit of Hell and tortured into submission. The first time she saw one she freaked. Now she just stopped breathing and prayed to God it would go away.

Its true form swirled around the human head like a sickly black smoke. Its fiery red eyes flickered independently from the ones on its host. But when the host blinked, his eyes went from normal to black as pitch, as if the pupil had bled over the entire eyeball. He blinked again and they were back to normal. Molly didn't know which set to look at.

"See me, can you?"

Molly didn't answer. Instead she forced herself to breathe as she tried to beat back the pain in her ankle.

The man smirked and cocked his head. "They said you were dangerous. But you don't look so bad to me."

"I don't know what you want," try as she might, Molly couldn't keep the shudder from her voice, "but just leave me alone."

It smiled, its teeth blackened and oozing. The host smiled too, his teeth straight and white.  
"Well, you're not very bright, are you?"

Molly's eyes hopped around the shadows at her feet, desperately looking for something, anything, she could use as a weapon. Or maybe she could run. With the others, one push sent them flying. It'd be enough to get a head start at least. The pain was manageable if it meant her life.

"Tsk, tsk, tsk." He crossed his arms over his chest and looked at her like a condescending parent. "You really are dumb if you think you can had me like the others. Like we work backwards on the smart scale."

Molly made to lunge but a calloused hand gripped her throat and the cold fingers wound around her neck. Her short gasps turned over into drowning heaves, trying to force air through the closing airway.

"Please don't kill me," Molly choked. Even as the black dots started to burst in her vision, Molly knew how stupid that sounded. She clawed at the hand and tried to shove at the chest in front of her but she was weakening too quickly. The beast's laugh was demonic and it slicked the man's cackle in Hellfire, burning her face. She closed her eyes against the noxious heat and turned her face to the side.

"Dead? No. You're no good to us dead. In fact, you're very bad to us dead. But unconscious? That we can manage. At least until we get you where we want you."

Molly felt her hands drop to her sides as the clench on her neck subsided. The ringing in her ears got louder as the noise in the alley faded out. But instead of slipping into blackness, the light turned on. Blinding white light on the inside of her eyelids. And the voices. They were getting louder. They were there before. With the others. They told her what to do. But she was awake then. Aware. Now?

Still their whispering got louder. Your face. Your face is your weapon. Fight and show him your face. Do it. You must. You have to do this. It was a bunch of different voices all hurling words at her at once. And the light was so bright. But Molly reached out with her invisible hands and pushed it away. The beast couldn't see this light. Just like the others couldn't see it until she showed it to them. She had no idea how she did it then and she had no idea how she was going to do it now but she didn't have a choice.

The feeling of the man's fingers wrapped around her throat came back into being. She could feel his nails digging into her skin. Slowly she opened her eyes and the garbage at her feet was as clear as if it were noon and not nine. Everything shimmered and as she looked upon something, it was illuminated in light. Slowly, she turned her head to the man and at first his smirk hung on his lips but when the light shone into his face, whiting out his features, his jaw dropped and a scream ripped through the alley.

Everything was illuminated, washed out in light yet crystal clear. The man's eyes flared, almost as if they were shooting flames, and then the light died down and all that was left was the man's screams. His hand dropped from her neck and Molly choked back a lungful of air.  
When the alley was finally dark again and the spots subsided from Molly's vision, she saw the man doubled over in front of her, his hands clenching his face. In a second his head jerked up, revealing to her two bloody, empty eye sockets where two perfectly seeing orbs used to be.

"Not again," she whispered to herself.

The beast was winded, its wispy form scathed from her attack. No more red eyes. Those has been burned out too.

"You bitch!" he screeched.

He lunged for her and Molly's hand caught his face, her palm against his cheek. She put her weight against him, fighting him off but instead of pushing back, he started to howl. The black mist started to fizzle away as the light glowed from within the man's body. His eyes and mouth flared with the light and his head tilted back as his body lurched forward. Molly could see the smoke try to scramble away but the light was faster. It flared heat white before it faded and the man's body crumpled to her feet. The black smoke was gone. What was left in the alley with her was human.

"Not again," she sobbed.

Without checking for a pulse, Molly shimmied out form under the weight on her legs and as fast a she could hobble she carried herself out of the alley without looking back.

**~**

"I think we got another case," Sam said as he tossed the newspaper on the bed next to Dean.

Dean cocked an eyebrow at his brother over his burger as he took a bite. "Think?" he said around the half-chewed hunk of meat. "Can't recognize a case when you see it?"

Sam rolled his eyes and deflated an inch or two. "Well I don't think some coyote ugly is searing out guys' eyes with her morning smile."

Dean frowned, letting the burger bite linger in his cheek as he glanced at the newspaper next to him.

"That's the third one in two weeks."

"Same town?"

Sam nodded. "All found in alleys. All with their eyes burned out."

"Not too many things go for the eyes like that," Dean said before he took another bite.

"There's only one thing I know that does that." Sam's eyebrows lifted as eyes urged to Dean.

Dean studied Sam's face for a second before the question crept into his tone. "You think it's an angel?"

Sam shrugged. "You know anything else that can do that without torching the rest of a person's face?"

"No."

A quick intake of breath and Dean's eyes widened. He placed the burger on the nightstand and put a hand to his throat in the sign of choking. Sam's eyes glanced to the door but quickly jetted back to Dean as blue started to color his lips. Dean gripped as his throat and motioned for his brother to hurry up.

Sam stood and with one step was next to Dean and pounding on his back. With a couple of hard thuds, a dripping piece of masticated cow shot from Dean's mouth and bounced onto Sam's bed. Dean gasped for air as he glared up at his brother.

"Thanks for rushing to my aid."

"Sorry. Cas kind of threw me off. He wouldn't let you die anyway."

Keeping himself planted, Dean slowly turned his glare onto Castiel.

"You." He pointed at the angel. "Can you at least turn the TV on to static six and let us know you're here before chiming into our conversations? I'm not ready to walk Carol Ann into the light yet."

Castiel frowned and tilted his head. " Who's Carol Ann?"

Dean was about to retort when Sam jumped in to divert back to the original conversation before Dean had his religious experience.

"You said no. It's an angel doing this?"

Castiel's gaze slid over to Sam. "We believe so."

"Why?" Dean asked. "That's not your smiting MO. Is someone getting bored?"

"We think this angel doesn't know what she's doing."

"How's that possible? Is this another Anna? She's been human so long she's forgot what she is?" Sam asked.

"No . . . and yes."

The brothers stood there for a second, both leaning into Castiel's presence, waiting for him to elaborate. After a few seconds, when the air still hung silent, Dean gave a disgruntled sigh and spoke up.

"C'mon, Cas. We're done dealing with this secretive crap. You obviously want our help or you wouldn't have beamed in. So spill. Who is she?"

Castiel pursed his lips and stared at the brothers without blinking. "She's not like Anna. She's not fallen. But . . ."

"But what? She is an angel?" Sam asked.

Castiel gave a short nod. "Yes."

"We're gonna need more than that," Dean interjected. He clenched his fist and did his best to hold himself back. He wanted to help but they could only do it with information.

"It's best not to divulge too much until you secure her. In the meantime we'll fortify a building that'll be safe to bring her to. We'll let you know where once it's done. You must get her before the demons attack her again."

"If she's an angel why can't you guys just swoop in and take her back to the mothership? Why do you need us to do it?" Dean asked. There was a picture Cas wasn't painting them and it was chapping his ass.

"It's not that simple."

"But you can make it that simple." Dean stepped up to Castiel and stared him down. "This sounds like your kind of problem, not ours."

Castiel didn't so much as flinch from Dean's irritated tone. "It's everyone's problem until we can secure her. Make sure the demons don't get her."

Before Dean could even form the words, Castiel had blinked out of the room, leaving Sam and Dean gaping at the space he was just standing in.

"Dammit, Cas!" Dean yelled into the empty space. He turned to Sam and didn't bother to hide his skepticism. "I'm getting a little sick of cleaning up their crap."

"Dean, let's look at this for a second. They have an angel they have no power over, that they need us to capture but she's not fallen and stuck in a meat suit without her memory. What kind of angel is she?"

"Is this some kind of four legs in the morning type of riddle because I hate those."

"No, all I'm saying is what the hell are we up against? Some kind of mutant rogue angel that not even Heaven can control? Those guys ripped you out of Hell and even this chick's out of their pay grade?"

Sam urged to Dean, begging him with his eyes to see the light but Dean just arched an eyebrow at him, his eyes half-lidded.

"You lost me at leg riddle."

"This doesn't sound like a suicide mission to you? It wouldn't be the first time the feather people set us up to die." Sam sighed heavily as his brother merely blinked at him.

Dean turned away, walked to the nightstand to grab his burger and continued eating. He pointed his burger at Sam and said, "You need to get out more."

Sam ran his hand through his hair and plopped down on his bed. "I just think we need to keep our heads on our shoulders about this one. I know you have a lot of faith in Cas but . . ."

"Better than putting stock in a demon," Dean said, chewing angrily.

"And I'm sure torturing Alistair was a walk in the park, right?"

Dean stared down at this brother while Sam looked at him with a knowing glare. Dean cleared some food out of his teeth with his tongue, tossed the remainder of the burger in the trash and turned his back on Sam.

"Let's get this over with. What's the worst she can do to us?"

"Melt our eyes out of our heads without even realizing she's doing it."

Dean looked up and silently stumbled over a few responses before admitting defeat.

"Okay. While I'm pretty attached to my eyes, she's not a renegade smiter. Look, all these guys were found in alleys, right? So she was probably under attack. Dudes with pothole eyes aren't dropping dead over their vente mocha latte chai's at Starbucks, are they?"

"Doesn't look like it," Sam said snidely as he put his hands on his hips.

"So as long as she doesn't feel threatened by us, she won't feel the need to go full contact Lasik on our heads."

Dean walked around the bed and started jamming his things into his duffel. When he caught wind that he was the only one in the room moving, he looked up to see Sam looking at him with a gaping awe on his face.

"Are we doing this or what 'cause Benton's two days away."

Sam scoffed, a flabbergasted smile on his face before he started gathering up his own stuff. Dean glanced up at him for a second, watching him as he moved. He still found it a hard pill to swallow that Sam was apprehensive about Cas. Even despite everything the angels sucked them in to, Sam was so quick to trust a demon, to flip him over for a demon. But he was skeptical of Cas? At least the angels worked for a greater good. A demented and really screwed up greater good but a greater good nonetheless. Maybe it was because of Ruby he was so skeptical. Both sides had ulterior motives after all, and they weren't shy about showcasing that.

Whatever it was, Sam had to tuck it back. This wasn't just any angel. It was Cas. He sacrificed as much for them as they did for him.

Dean grabbed the keys to the Impala and walked out the door without looking back.


	2. 2

Molly scratched her back and shifted her shoulders under her shirt. Her skin was drying up and no matter how much she moisturized, the skin continued to flake and crack in two neat lines down her back. In a couple of places the skin cracked to the point of blood peeking through the wound. There were a couple bandaids on her back now to keep her shirt clean.  
The shirt she was attempting to fold in her hands ended up a knot of cotton so she flicked it out and started again. But instead of keeping her eyes on the shirt and not out the window, her eyes followed the cluster of cops on the other side of the road and a few stores down from her's. The flashing red and blue lights were invading the darkness of her store before she even opened the doors. They questioned her first thing. As soon as they saw her limp up to the door.

She admitted to seeing the guy and said he leered at her. She twisted her ankle crossing the street to get away from him. But he was alive the last time she saw him. Behind them a gurney rolled its way to an ambulance supporting a lumpy black bag, guided by a couple paramedics. Molly blinked and returned her attention to the officer in front of her. From the look on his face, he didn't doubt her. He'd never believe what really happened; that a light from within her burned out his eyes and disintegrated the creature controlling his body, killing him in the process. They'd commit her for something like that. So she tried to look as agitated as someone accosted by a drunk should look and went into her store.

They were still there. Probably marking the patterns. The other guys she killed looked the same when she left them. Would they ever connect the dots? Could they ever loop it back to her? The thought was preposterous and horrifying at the same time.

In the middle of folding the same shirt for the fourth time, an engine rumbled down the street and a black car, something classic, rolled to a stop at the curb in front of her store. Two men got out, the old doors squeaking, dressed in sterile black suits, and headed towards the beacon of yellow crime scene tape.

Molly's ears started ringing, the voices jamming into each other in incomprehensible sentences. Snippets of words stuck out to her but nothing too distinct. She tried to ignore it but it was just as distracting as the scene out her window.

Twenty minutes later the bell on her door jingled and Molly was wrenched out of her daze. Walking through the door were the two suits, their faces blanket yet handsome, and both carrying the mock air of authority. They played official but they didn't feel it. She was aware of the loud whispers in her ear again. She tugged on her earlobe in a futile attempt to ward the noise off and watched as the two approaching men flipped out their badges from concealed jacket pockets and tucked them away just as quickly.

"Good morning, ma'am," the shorter one said as a crooked smile spread across his face. "Agents Wetton," he pointed to himself, "and Palmer," he pointed to his partner. "We'd just like to ask you a few questions about what happened last night."

Molly blinked up at them, her face stone, and dropped the wrinkled shirt onto the table. "I already told them everything I know," she said as her chin pointed to the cops outside. "I wasn't saving anything for later."

The men chuckled but when they saw that Molly's face was still blank, their smiles dropped and the shorter one cleared his throat.

"Well, Miss . . ."

"Benson. Molly Benson," Molly said meekly.

"Miss Benson, we have some different questions for you. Ones that the townies wouldn't ask."

The man didn't reach for a pad or pen and instead stared at Molly, waiting for her approval. Molly swallowed hard and absently reached her hand around to the opposite shoulder and scratched. A small wave of relief rolled through her body.

When she didn't answer, Agent Wetton carried on. "Did anything seem . . . off about the guy that accosted you? Did anything about him seem out of the ordinary?"

Molly visibly flinched and rapidly blinked back the shock. Well, yeah. A whole hell of a lot about the guy was off. Who were these two? Mulder and Skully? How would they know that something might have been not right about all of this? Aside from the eye thing, none of the local cops thought that was all that odd.

She stopped scratching and brought her hand back around front. "Uh . . ."

"Whoa," the tall one, Agent Palmer, said just before he snatched her wrist. Molly jumped and tried to jerk away but stopped. When she looked at her finger tips, they were covered in blood. "Are you hurt?"

He started to walk closer and Molly's eyes dropped to the floor. "Uh . . . n-no."

He placed a large, gentle hand on her shoulder and asked, "May I?" Molly nodded slowly.

The large cut of the neck on her shirt pulled taut slightly as Agent Palmer pulled it down to look. Molly stiffened, afraid of what he was going to see.

"You're bleeding." Out of the corner of her eye she saw his head come up to look at his partner. "I need tissues or something."

Agent Wetton looked to her and she nodded to the register. "Under the counter."

He was there and back in a couple of strides, walking around to her back and handing Agent Palmer the tissues.

"They don't look deep," he said as he padded the wound.

"Dry skin," Molly whispered, not meaning to. She cleared her throat and spoke again. "It's been getting worse."

Agent Wetton came back around first. She felt the tissue press to her shoulder and her shirt slackened before Agent Palmer joined him.

"Might want to get some moisturizer on your way home," Agent Wetton stated, a slight, albeit silly, curl to his lip.

Molly remained stone-faced. "Right."

"So . . ." Agent Palmer's soft voice pulled her back to their mission and her body started to stiffen again. "That guy, you were about to say something about him?"

Molly looked between the two agents and shifted her weight to her other foot as she pulled the tissue out of her shirt. She pulled it open to stare at the spots of blood for a moment before she knew she had to say something.

"What do you mean out of the ordinary?" Her voice felt scratchy but she tried to stay level. "Like missing an ear or something?"

Agent Wetton flipped the ends of his jacket out of the way and rested his hands on his hips. Molly looked to him and watched him struggle to form the thought. "Like . . . he was something that might have not been . . . wholly human."

Her brow furrowed and she looked between the two men again. She knew exactly what she saw. She'd seen it a handful of times in the past few weeks. But who the hell were these guys asking her these kinds of questions? And what's with Agent Palmer's hair? It was a little on the long side to fit into the stiffs at the FBI.

"Who are you? Really?" She needed to close off. They couldn't see her shake. Getting defensive was the best way to close that door. "How can a human look anything other than human?"

They shifted uncomfortably. Agent Wetton vetted the answer. "We've been tracking some unusual behavior in the area, trying to determine if our suspicions are accurate."

"And those are?" She arched an eyebrow at both of them, tucked the tissue in her pocket and picked up the crumpled shirt she'd dropped earlier.

"Look," Agent Palmer interrupted his partner before he even had a chance to speak, Agent Wetton's mouth hanging open and then snapping shut. "If you see anything weird, no matter how weird it is, call us." He leaned forward and pressed a card towards Molly. She hesitated a beat before taking it. She stared at it hard, searching for something that'll call these guys' bluffs. It looked official enough but it's not like business cards are hard to come by.

"Right," she said, still looking at the card. She looked up and gave them both a closed-mouth smile. "You'll hear from me if I do."

They both nodded at her, offering the same tight smile in return, before they slowly turned away from her and walked out the door. The jingle on the door startled her and she nearly dropped the card. She tucked it into her pocket and set back to folding the shirt as she watched the men walk away. The doors squealed as they got into the car and the engine thundered as Agent Wetton turned the key. It roared as the sleek vehicle rolled away and Molly wondered what kind of FBI agents they were that could drive around in a car like that.  
One of her employees, Kate, strolled through the door twenty minutes later. The cops were still across the street and she tried to get Molly to give her the scoop. She gave the girl the Cliff Notes version before she told her to watch the store as Molly ran to the bathroom in the back.

The dull, dirty light clicked on and Molly quietly closed and locked the door. At first she didn't want to look, afraid of what she might see, but Molly turned her eyes on the mirror and forced them to look. The sight wasn't terrible but it wasn't all that great either. It was surprising that the agents, if they really were agents, didn't call her out when they saw her.

Her blonde hair was a little oily. She just didn't have the strength to wash it the night before. Her green eyes were tinged with red, sleep-wary and dry. She rubbed at them but that only made the red worse. Her pale skin was still a little blotchy, the tears staining longer than she thought they would. There was a trail of dead bodies behind her and they were just stacking up. That was certainly something to cry about.

A piece of the tissue Agent Palmer used on her shoulder was still there, the drying blood sticking it to her skin. She reached around and pulled it off with a yank, flinching as it ripped from her skin. It was a Rorschach on the tissue when she looked at it, the center deep and arterial red with splattering the further out it went.

She reached around and pulled the back of her shirt down, the collar pulling taut at her neck and exposing her shoulder. Slowly she turned her back to the mirror, wincing as the went. It was an instinctual reaction to the blow that was about to come.

When her shoulder came around and the blade bone came into view, all she could see was a red gash and a frantic sob stumbled over her lips. Leaning into the mirror, her eyes focused on the wound. For a glorious second, she thought it looked far worse than what it really was, the dried blood worn like horrifying make-up. But the closer she leaned in, ignoring the pain of the sink grinding into her hip, the more she realized it really was that bad and probably worse. She inched her fingers along the skin and gave the wound a sight pull to see if she could see how deep it was. The skin gave with the pull and the gash opened wider. A cry choked in Molly's throat, she whirled back around and retched into the sink, the noise echoing back at her off the porcelain.

She sobbed into the basin, not daring to look back up but knowing she had to. Her tears ran down her china and splashed into the tiny water puddles below her face. Her disheveled appearance screamed back at her from the mirror and she turned her body to look at the other shoulder.

This was a hell of a lot more than a wicked case of dry skin. Her right shoulder mirrored her left, the skin cracked and forming an angry red gash in her back. It hadn't started bleeding like the other side yet.

Hands shaking, she rested them on the edges of the sink and took hold, hanging on as if she'd fall straight through the floor. She stared at her face as it broke down; her chin quivering, nostrils flaring, eyes scrunching against the terrifying fact that her body was falling apart. Literally. The ache radiating all over her body was numbing and her back? It looked like she could pull her skin right off.

Molly sobbed for a solid minute, just gripping the sink like a supporting shoulder to cry on. Somewhere in her mind she knew this wasn't something for doctors. They couldn't help her. Not with the voices talking to her in her head, or her constant pain, or her murdering people with light. She fished around in her pocket and her fingers scraped against the business card Agent Palmer handed her. Was this the kind of strange he was talking about?

An itch crept through the gash in her right shoulder and Molly twisted to try and ease it. When it didn't go away she reached a hand back and gently tried to scratch, being careful around the wound. Her finger nipped on something prickly and it took her a second to find it again. There was something sticking out of the gash. Carefully, she pinched whatever it was and started to pull. Her shoulder pulled back, not wanting whatever it was to be let go. Molly almost let out a cry but bit her tongue. It was moving out. She turned her back to the mirror and ground her teeth as she kept pulling. A gag rose in her throat as a long, bloodied something shook its way out of the wound, clenched in her fingers.

Everything in her screamed to drop it and run but the voices were talking again. And again, it was hard to make out what they were saying. She felt that she should look at it. Despite her roiling stomach, she turned it over in her hands and realized it was pressed thin by the blood. She flayed it out, spreading little strands off of the sturdier spine. When she was done, she was holding a bloody, raged feather freshly pulled from her own back.

The feather fell solidly into the sink, Molly threw up what little there was in her stomach and ran out of the bathroom.

**xXx**

"That girl was freaked out about something," Dean said over the squeal of the closing car door.

"Did you see her back? It looked like she was being torn from the inside out." Sam followed Dean to the rickety door of their motor lodge room and waited for him to unlock the door.

Dean struggled with the rusted key and grumbled under his breath but jiggled it unlocked and walked in. "She knows a hell of a lot more than what she's telling us. Unless she's addicted to three a.m. infomercials, you don't look like that after an uneventful night." He ripped as his tie and yanked it over his head, throwing it he didn't care where.

"I think it's her." Sam already had his jacket off and had wandered into the bathroom. The image of her wound was seared into his mind and he barely saw anything but that as he ambled into the 70s-yellow room.

"That's the rogue angel that's killing people? Her? We saw the same girl, right? She didn't look strong enough to hold up the sweater she was folding." Dean rummaged around in his duffel for a change of clothes as the toilet flushed at the other end of the room.

"If you had crazy powers you had no idea to control and were killing people with them with no idea how to stop it, how would you look?"

Sam sauntered out of the bathroom, his thought process twitching its way across his face, when he stopped mid-step and looked passed Dean. Not hearing any movement nor his brother's knowing voice, Dean looked up to see Sam unmoving and staring over Dean's shoulder. Dean spun around and jumped before quickly zipping up the fly on his jeans.

"Christ, Cas. Knock next time. I don't need you popping in when . . . forget it." Dean shook his head, grabbed a nearby shirt and pulled it on.

Castiel looked from brother to brother without a movement of a muscle on his face until he spoke. "Did you find her?"

"We don't know," Sam answered. "Maybe."

"She has these . . ." Dean motioned to his back with his hands in an indecipherable gesture. "Wounds on her back, top to bottom. They look pretty nasty."

Castiel blinked, nodded his head and glanced away from the brothers. "Her vessel is shattering. It won't be able to contain her much longer. Her ascension needs to be controlled or it's going to be . . . messy."

"But you're in a meat suit without a problem. Why is her angel self eating her away?" Sam wanted answers and wasn't as willing to go on as little as Dean was.

Castiel looked at him, almost through him, and answered. "She's an archangel. Their vessels are specially chosen. She's not in a proper receptacle."

"Okay, Cas, this need-to-know crap has gotta stop. I'm a big fan of my eyes and I wanna keep them so what the hell are we up against? Aside from a crazy archangel. As if that wasn't bad enough."

Sam looked over at Dean and tried to keep the surprise off of his face. Trusting as he was with the angels, this one he wasn't going to let slide. Good to know they were still on the same page. If they were up against something, they had to know what they were dealing with.

Castiel licked his lips, a habit that never actually wet the parched skin. "She's an angel born. A product of Michael. The last time he occupied a vessel, he . . . indulged." Castiel looked away again, almost ashamed on behalf of his brother. "Even angels have weaknesses."

A smile flickered on Dean's lips and the beginnings of a cackle escaped his mouth. "Wait, so this is Michael's daughter? The guy that wants to use me as a hand puppet? We're trying to wrangle his kid?"

"That doesn't make sense." Sam's incredulity pressed itself on his eyebrows, forcing them into a frown. "Angels are created, not born, and you guys are . . . useless in that department."

Castiel never flinched. "Demons can create antichrists if they copulate with a human while possessing one. Angels can create those like this girl if given the same chance although it's far rarer of an occurrence. And a flaw in God's design."

"So Mr. Infallible made a boo-boo and now we have to clean up the mess." Dean plopped himself down on one of the beds, his gray t-shirt and jeans clashing with the orange paisley design on the comforter. "We need to start requiring hazard pay for this kind of crap."

"You don't understand, Dean. This girl's existence divides Heaven on a cataclysmic scale." Dean rolled his eyes up to glare at an approaching Castiel. His gravely voice was starting to grate on him. "She's human and we're bound to kneel to her like we do the rest."

"But . . ." The skepticism rolled through Dean's shoulders as he tensed them.

"But . . . there are those that feel she is an abomination. Her existence contradicts all that we are. They feel she should be destroyed."

"So what you're saying is they're hunting her and will tear her apart when they find her." Castiel nodded slowly, his face solemn. "Great." Dean slapped his hands onto his knees and stood up. His fingers pressed into his forehead as he started to pace. "As if Lucifer and demons and Michael and Zachariah aren't enough, we're trying to rescue a runt puppy that you guys want to kick to death."

"Which side are you on, Cas?" Sam stepped himself between an increasingly agitated Dean and Castiel. No matter what the answer was, they were screwed.

Jimmy's adam's apple, the name of Castiel's meat suit when unoccupied, bobbed as Castiel needlessly swallowed. "She needs to be protected so she can ascend."

"Ascend? Like to Heaven?" The incredulity was sneering Dean's face. His hands splayed and clenched, an attempt to ease his tension.

"She's . . . stuck in her vessel. The only way to release her is to kill the body."

Dean chuckled and held his hand up to stop the insanity. "You want to protect her so you can kill her?"

Castiel was failing to understand why Dean had such a problem with this. "It's very simple, Dean. She needs to ascend to Heaven, receive her grace and become the angel she already is."

"But what kind of angel will she be?" Sam's voice was soft but determined. "Your armor's started to crack and you've been around us less than a year. She's actually human." Castiel tried to protest but Sam cut him off. "She believes she's human. She's lived as a human her whole life. Will she just forget all that and become a good, obedient archangel like she's supposed to be?"

The rug scuffled as Castiel shifted his feet. He looked up at Sam and over to Dean, both anxiously waiting for his answer. He cast his eyes back down to the floor, opened his mouth and closed it again.

"C'mon, Cas. You can't stop the story before the battle scene," Dean pleaded.

He sighed heavily and tucked his hands into the pockets of his trench coat. Slowly he looked up, defeat in his eyes as he looked back and forth between Sam and Dean. "I don't know. Those that see her kind as an abomination have always succeeded in keeping them from ascending."

"That's awesome," Dean said sardonically, motioning to the greater room as if the problem were standing right in front of them. "And what's so special about this one? She carry a magic birthmark?"

"No," Castiel said, not even acknowledging the jab. "This is the first archangel."

"And it just happens to be Michael's," Sam said. Castiel nodded.

"They haven't found her yet. But they're close. Get her here. Quickly." Castiel pulled a slip of paper out of his pocket and handed it to Dean, who took it reluctantly. "It'll be safeguarded but it won't hold for long."

Dean shrugged his arms in defeat. "Anything else? You have a sea you want me to split?"

Castiel regarded him for a moment before saying, "That's already been done. Do this. Preferably tonight."

In a blink the angel was gone and Sam and Dean were left alone in their tacky motor lodge suite.

"We don't do enough?" Dean said as he held up the paper and walked passed Sam. He plopped down on the bed again and fell onto his back. The heels of his hands kneaded his eyes. "At lease with the rest of the crap you know what's coming. This chick? She could sneeze and set us on fire."

"They need all the help they can get?" Sam's tone was light, albeit unsure, an attempt to break the tension that fell flat. Dean glared at him but said nothing. "We just keep our distance."

"What, like use a net and drag her there?"

"I was thinking just knocking her out. If she's unconscious, she can't do anything to us or herself." Sam's face was matter-of-fact and he shrugged his shoulders.

Dean looked up at his brother, not bothering to hide the disbelief from his face. Maybe if it were a handful of years earlier, he'd be the one to suggest it and Sam was supposed to be the one to get disgusted. Now? What the hell happened? He couldn't be serious.

"Or . . ." Dean started, rolling his eyes away from Sam. "We could explain to her what's going on and escort her to the safe house."

"To get murdered by angels." Dean started to mouth some words but nothing quite made its way over his lips. "Let's face the facts, Dean. Someone with feathers is going to kill her, one way or another. Besides, why would she believe us anyway?"

The bed groaned under Dean's weight as he sat up. "You saw her. She's freaked about something."

Before Sam could respond a muffled ring cut the tension in the room as it echoed out of Sam's pocket. Sam pulled the Blackberry out and frowned at the screen as he hit the answer button. The number wasn't from anyone saved to his contact list.

Dean watched the one-sided conversation only half-interested until Sam said a name.  
"Molly? Yes, of course. This morning."

Sam's eyes widened as he motioned to Dean, to do what Dean had no idea. but he stood up from the bed and motioned for a response from Sam. Sam put his hand out in a stopping motion and pointed to the phone at his ear.

"Yes, I know where that is. We'll be there in twenty minutes."

The beep of the silenced call rang in Dean's ears as he waited for Sam's details. Molly was willing to spill after all. God, he hoped this was the right chick. But what if it was? They brought her to Cas and then what? Death? If this is the angel she's dead no matter what. But what if . . . could they keep hiding her? The angels, both sides, were having issues getting to her. There's some mark on her keeping her somewhat hidden. Maybe it could work.

"She has details on the case." Sam emphasized the last few words, his voice italicizing the statement. "There's a diner near her store. We're meeting her there."

"Great. Let's get this figured out then."

The keys jingled as Dean grabbed them off the nearby table. His jaw was tense, his teeth grinding. He didn't want to tell Sam about hiding her, not yet. There were kinks he had to work out first, and quickly. Like where they'd keep her.

"What's up, Dean?" Sam asked as he closed the door behind him. His brother was thinking, hard. Every muscle in his face was tensed. He was planning something. Dean was a good hunter but he never had the element of surprise going for him.

"This just isn't sitting right," Dean said as he got into the Impala.

The sky was clouding over, blotting out the sunshine they had not long before. Dean flashed on the headlights and illuminated Sam for a second before he walked around the car and got in. Neither spoke but both simmered in the silence, each keeping something from the other. The engine roared to life and Dean backed out of the driveway and onto the road surrounded by dense forest on either side. Thinking needed to be fast and convincing needed to be faster. Dean eased up on the pedal and took his time getting into town.


	3. 3

The French fries were only half cooked and the burger she ordered looked more like a hockey puck. Molly hated this place. How they stayed in business was beyond her. She guessed that if people were so used to it and had no other basis for comparison then it made itself good by default. Fortunately for Molly her taste buds worked and she threw the ketchup-drenched fry at her plate in disgust.

She flopped back against the booth and immediately jerked forward, sucking air through her teeth and trying not to cry out in pain. Right now it was taking all her energy to just not cry. It wasn't just the pain and there was a lot of that. It was her mind. It was like she could feel it fracturing. The voices were chipping away pieces of her and she really, really, hoped she was just losing her mind. It was a simple explanation, an easy one and a logical one. It would explain why her attackers looked like demons, the light of death, why she thought she was pulling feathers out of her back. It was all one giant hallucination. And telling the agents may get her the help she needed. She was obviously too weak to own it and get it herself. They wanted weird? They were going to get weird. She bet they weren't expecting the handful she was about to feed them. She could almost feel the peace of an asylum now.

The bell on the door dinged and Molly looked to see the agents walk in. Agent Wetton was missing his tie and his shirt was unbuttoned a few buttons, as if her phone call to Agent Palmer had disrupted his winding down for the evening. Agent Palmer was still suited up.

"Molly," he said as he slid into the booth opposite her. Agent Wetton sat down next to him. "Is everything okay?"

The voices exploded in a cacophony and Molly tried not to show the deafening pain it caused. It was a screech of microphones and speakers with no way to turn it down. She closed her eyes and stretched her neck. She inhaled deeply and opened them back up again. Palmer's brow was furrowed and Wetton was frowning.

"Nothing is okay," she said. "But I have nowhere else to go."

"It's fine," Palmer said. "That's why we're here. What happened?"

Wetton was still frowning at her, the skeptic of the two most likely. She looked at him, studied his face. He could have been a model for all he looked. But the lines around his eyes spoke of harder times. Molly looked to Palmer and the same age lines tired his eyes as well. They were exhausted but determined, as if they were running from their own demons.

Molly made to lean back but corrected herself, not wanting to go through that pain right this second in front of them. She reached into her purse and pulled out a plastic baggy, red smeared on the inside and a crumpled piece of something wedged into a corner. Palmer picked it up and played around with it. He looked at her, his eyebrows raised, and handed the bag to Wetton. His frown deepened as he flipped it over in his hands.

"It's a feather." Molly's voice cracked on the last word. It was the first time she said it out loud, this bloody thing.

Wetton looked at her, his lips pursed. "You hit a goose on the way here?"

He was mocking her but his look was anything but light or joking. He was picking at the feather through the bag, trying to spread it out against the blood holding it together. She watched Palmer's face twist into a nervous smile. He shifted and Wetton glared at him but Palmer kept his eyes on her.

"From my back."

Wetton stopped fiddling with the bag and looked at her. All hints of awkward joviality dropped from Palmer's face.

"In the wound." Molly looked at her hands. "I pulled the first one out after you left this morning."

Molly looked back up and they were both sitting ramrod straight. Her eyes bounced between the two and panic started to bubble in her chest. She was going away to a bright, white, padded room where she wouldn't be able to even think she could burn someone away.

"What else?" Wetton asked.

Molly flinched. His tone was serious, firm. She couldn't tell if he believed her or not. He narrowed his eyes and focused. A string came loose on the hem of her shirt sleeve and she started to pull at it.

"The men . . . the dead ones?" She swallowed hard. "They weren't really men. They were . . . something else."

Palmer tensed, his jaw clenching tighter. "What do you mean?"

He wasn't curious. Nothing about the way he looked or sounded said disbelief. In fact it was quite the opposite. Good, god, they knew. Molly looked to Wetton and he was just as stiff. A muscle in his jaw twitched and that's when Molly saw it. They both had that same look, not that they wanted to know more but they already knew it. They were just grudgingly waiting for confirmation. Who were these guys?

The voices in her head seared supersonic and Molly couldn't hold back the cringe of pain. In the blackened edges of her vision she saw Palmer reach for her, concern on his face, but Wetton slapped a hand on his arm to hold him back. As if she would hurt them.

After a moment the screaming voices started to fade and filed their way into a rhythmic chant. They were saying something, repeating it. Whatever they were saying it wasn't in English but the more focused the voices became the clearer they got, the more she could understand. Soon her face wasn't twisted in pain but in confusion. It was a name.

She looked up to the agents, her blurry vision shifting into focus. She cocked her head to the side and said, "Winchesters?" It was a gun as far as she was concerned but the agents sat back in unison, looked at each other and back at her. "What is it?"

In that moment her world went silent. She could still hear the clinking of cutlery and tinkling of glass but the voices were quiet. They hadn't been quiet in weeks. Now there was a block of emptiness in her head and it made her uneasy.

Just as Wetton licked his lips and made to speak the voices surged again, an eardrum-shattering surge of noise that made Molly cry out. When she looked the agents were covering their ears. Everyone was as they fell off bar stools, curled under tables. What was happening? None of these people were demons. Why was she hurting them?

She heard the explosion a millisecond before the plate glass windows shattered in, sending shards of glass everywhere. Molly dropped to the bench and rolled under the table. It was the most she could do as she fought the pain wanting to explode her head.

A hand reached under the table and grabbed her arm. She screamed as the fingers dug in and with a yank she was out, skittering in glass and looking up at Wetton, a hurried expression on his face. His lips moved but Molly couldn't hear anything over the screeching noise. Instead he kept pulling and Molly had little else to do but follow. She staggered along behind Wetton, dodging writhing bodies as people clutched their heads, blood oozing between their fingers. They reached the door and Wetton threw a look behind her. Palmer was bringing up the rear as he nodded. Whatever was exchanged between them was already done by the time Molly turned back to Wetton and he pulled her out the door.

The black car was in front of them, miraculously unscathed in all of the glass blasting, and Wetton opened the back door for her. Molly pulled up short. It was painfully obvious they weren't FBI but they were something. It's like they were prepared for all of this. Or at the very least knew how to handle it enough to get out.

A brilliant white light flashed from inside the diner and Molly jerked away, covering her head for an impact that didn't come. A dull ring hummed in her hears but it paled in comparison to the screeching noise she just heard. Palmer walked toward them, leaving the blasted diner behind him, his hand trailing blood as he walked. Molly's mouth gaped as she tried to form words for Palmer's hand, the white light, their preparedness, but nothing came.

"That won't keep them away for long. We have to go. C'mon," Palmer said as he waved her into the car.

She looked to Wetton who only nodded. "We can help. But we have to go. It'll be all right."  
Molly shook her head. "None of this is all right." She ducked into the back seat and Wetton closed the door after her.

"No, it's not," he said before he climbed into the driver's seat and started the car.

**#**

Dean was still breathing heavy as they drove back to the motel. In the rearview mirror he watched Molly gaze out the window and rub her arms. She had no idea what she was. And Cas expected them to just hand over an innocent girl so he could ice her, stuff her grace down her throat and give themselves another body in this whole Heaven and Hell fight? Not a chance.

Sam rummaged around in his pockets and produced a slip of paper. Dean recognized it immediately. He shifted his eyes back to the road so he wouldn't have to look at it. Too bad Sam was holding it in his peripheral.

"Don't you need this?" Sam asked.

Dean was quiet for a few seconds before he finally spoke. "We should go back to the motel first. Figure things out."

Sam pursed his lips and made to speak but Dean's look sliced off his words. No way was he about to discuss the fate of the girl in the backseat of his car while she could hear them. She had a right to make a choice for herself. She had a right to know what was happening to her before they just handed her over to the angel brigade. They were hunters, not monsters. Molly was still human. Mostly. She still had human emotions and she didn't think herself anything but. For all the things he'd done he couldn't just hand her over to die and keep her in the dark about it all.

The motel was a run-of-the-mill dump, drive-up, key locks with actual keys, an attendant that'd seen better times at the hillbilly psychopath trailer park, and a letter and a half flickering in and out of life on the outside sign. It was as home as any of the rest of them were. It was all Dean knew so despite the lumpy mattress and cardboard towels that were common to them all, it still made his heart feel as close to home as his life would get.

"This is where the Bureau put you guys? There's a Hilton down the street," Molly said as they pulled up to the room door, the headlights illuminating the tacked on numbers, one swinging upside down in the beam.

"Cutbacks," Dean said as he cut the engine. "And the FBI doesn't want it to look like it supports the loose . . . morals of the Hilton girls. We look bad enough as it is."

Their eyes met in the rearview and Molly held his gaze, arching her eyebrow at him. Dean cleared his throat, popped the trunk and got out of the car. Sam walked around back to grab their bag and quickly closed the trunk before Molly could accidentally catch a glimpse of what was inside. Dean went to open the door for her but she beat him to it and was halfway out of the car before he could reach a hand out. Instead he went to the room door, jiggled the lock to unstick the key, and let them in. He had no idea why he kept up the FBI façade out there. The second she stepped into the room their cover would be blown.

Blown, set on fire, and pissed on was more like it.

One foot in and Molly gasped. She raised her hands to her mouth and took in the room around her. John's journal was opened on a nearby table. Sam's laptop was cracked open and newspapers with all of the recent killings were spread out in a corner. On each wall was a sigil painted in what could be blood. Wards for angels and demons. They were walking to a hot bed. Best to cover all of their bases.

Sam shimmied in behind her and closed the space between them to urge her forward. She moved without even realizing it and Sam shut the door behind him.

"This . . . this is not FBI," she said as soon as enough shock wore off. "The car, the motel, the weird stuff . . . who are you guys?"

The brothers looked at each other and with a shrug Dean accepted responsibility for the explanation. His smile didn't leave his mouth but it still made his eyes look tired.

"Look, Molly, we're hunters and you're in the middle of some awful crap and we want to help."  
"By lying to me," she said as she took a step back.

"Would you have talked to us if we just came out with it?"

Molly didn't respond. Instead she twisted her fingers together and kept surveying the room.  
Dean sat on the edge of the bed. "I know this seems crazy but you have to trust us. Things are about to get bad."

She let out a single sardonic 'ha' and looked at Dean. "Crazy would have been easy. It would've been simple. I was just hallucinating everything and I just needed some time in a psych ward and I'd be all better. But you see it too. These . . . things are real. What I'm doing is real. The stupid feathers I'm pulling out of my back are real. What am I supposed to do with this? Are you as crazy as I am or are we just screwed?"

Dean stood up and reached out a reassuring hand to Molly, which she quickly backed away from. "Everything is real and we're far from crazy. I wish I could tell you something else but I don't want to lie to you."

"Anymore." Molly completed the unspoken last word to Dean's statement.

Dean nodded. "Anymore."

"There are people that can help you, Molly. They know what's happening and they want to help." Sam was sincere. It dripped from every word he spoke and Dean wanted to strangle him for it. He shot his brother a look that was like a slap and Sam frowned, not knowing where Dean was going with this.

"But first," Dean said, before Sam could keep talking, "you deserve to know what's going on. You wants answers, right?"

Molly nodded, her eyelids sagging and lingering closed before she pried them back open. She pressed her fingers to her temple and wavered. Sam jerked his arms out to her despite being too far away to do anything useful.

"Yeah, I want answers. Can I use your bathroom?"

She was lurching toward the washroom before either of them spoke. The door closed and the lock clicked into place, leaving Sam and Dean gaping in the greater bedroom.

"She doesn't look too good," Dean said.

"What are you doing, Dean?" Sam asked. He'd stepped up to his brother's shoulder and was angrily whispering.

"Other than caring for her well-being?"

"You know what I'm talking about. She needs to go to Cas. They know what to do for her."

"They know what they need to do to her," Dean spat. He looked up to his brother and glared.

"She deserves to know the full story, what she's walking in to. She should get to decide whether she lives or dies. Aren't we trying to keep the angels off our asses for that same reason?"

Sam pursed his lips and stared back at his brother. "All I'm saying is we have enough angel crap to deal with without adding a hunted archangel to the list."

"Right," Dean said, nodding to his shoes. "And when Michael goes all Puppet Master on my ass they can have a barbeque reunion. I'll make sure the lawn darts and bocce ball are set up before I lose use of my arms."

Dean watched as Sam dug his fingers into the half-windsor knot in his tie and ripped it out. He whipped it through the air and sent it floating onto his bed. Everything about him was tense and Dean knew damn well why. After getting royally played by a demon and letting Lucifer out of his cage it was really no surprise Sam wanted to play by the angel book on this one. One more worry was not what they needed right now but handing over Molly to slaughter, no matter the end game, wasn't something that would let him sleep at night.

"C'mon, Sammy," Dean said as Sam flopped down into a rickety, paisley-covered chair and deigned to look at his brother. "This isn't the first time we've met someone doing crappy things without knowing it or wanting to. We didn't turn the mob on them."

"No, but our track record's really tanked lately, Dean. Our judgment sucks. I don't know if I can keep betting on it."

Dean pressed the heel of his hand into his eye and sighed deeply. He rubbed his hand through his hair and flipped through his reasons Rolodex in his head.

"She's only killed demons. Not all that bad, is it?"

Sam cocked his head just a bit and it made Dean think of a beagle. "How long before she really loses control and it's not just demons getting toasted anymore?"

Before yet another retort could come out of Dean's mouth the sound of glass breaking cut him off. The brothers looked at each other and moved toward the bathroom. Dean tried the knob but it was locked so he knocked.

"Everything all right?" A beat passed but there was no response. "Molly?" He knocked again.  
Sam flipped out a credit card and held it up to Dean. Dean snatched it and shimmied it into the door. After a second the lock gave and they were in the bathroom. Alone. Sam threw back the shower curtain with a schuunk and was greeted by a tub coated in shattered glass, a broken window and no Molly. Blood tipped a couple of pointed pieces and a drop ran down the yellow-tiled wall but that's all that was left of Michael's kid.

Dean just stared at the broken window. He chanced a glance up to the ceiling. Hey, he'd seen weirder things than someone floating over his head. He shifted the door a little closer to closed so he could see behind it. Nothing. Molly booked. He'd lost the rogue archangel.

"Looks like it's leaning toward doing it your way," Sam said as he eyed the coagulating blood.

Dean kept staring, willing Molly to pop back in through the window, but he knew that was asking for too much. Playing hide and seek with an archangel was not on his list of things to do. If one of the other camps caught her first she was dead. Just great.

Dean heaved a sigh and muttered, "Damn it."


	4. 4

Every step was a pierce of pain in her side but Molly kept running. Or rather limping at a fast pace. Blood had already seeped through her shirt and jeans where she’d snagged herself on the broken window at the motel. But it was a small price to pay to get away from the cult leaders playing FBI dress-up. Whoever they were they were into some serious stuff and she just could not handle that right now.

The road was a hundred feet away, cutting through the woods like a scar. There was enough moonlight to see the break and she was close enough to see headlights approaching without anyone else seeing her. Just Molly and dark, quiet, shadow-filled trees. A thin branch whipped her arm and she gasped at the pain. She stumbled and dropped to a knee but she picked herself back up just as quickly, kept moving as best she could despite the mounting pain.

A stich bloomed in her ribs and Molly grunted and clutched her side. No, she couldn’t stop. She was the epitome of weird but those guys were weirder and they were most certainly not the answer. Not after the incident at the restaurant. No. She just killed people with light coming out of her. She didn’t ruin windows. How absurd.

The pain in her side was not going away and Molly slowed to a brisk walk, feeling every piece of torn and bruised skin as she started second-guessing crawling out of that motel window. Her bearings were blown. She had no idea where she was and there hadn’t been a car on the road for ten minutes. What the hell was she doing?

Weighing one level of crazy against another, that’s what. Tears stung her eyes and blurred the world in front of her. Moonlight and darkness swirled together in a kaleidoscope of night and it pretty damn well represented the hot mess of her life. She swiped her wrist across her eyes and brought the forest back into focus. Brought her stupid decision back into focus.

She should go back. Those crazy guys at least knew what they were talking about. They had answers and they at least tried to keep her safe. Agents or not the feeling of being a dumbass was starting to become overwhelming.

So was the suffocating silence around her.

The word ‘stupid’ died on her tongue as silence rang in Molly’s ears. She looked to her left, where the road should have been, but it was covered in shadow. It might have been there but a cloud moved over the moon and it was too dark to tell. She looked up and the leaves were still against the stars. The air was heavy with the stillness, almost a pressure on her skin. And not so much as an owl’s hoot or a flap of wings or anything scuttling across the forest floor to break the quiet. As if the world was frozen around her.

A ring, separate from the thrum of silence, started around her, a subtle buzz, before it exploded in a cacophony of sound that dropped Molly to her knees in a shout of pain. She clamped her hands to her ears but it did nothing for the sound. It vibrated through her skin and bones, shook her blood into a froth. Her screams tore at her throat but she couldn’t hear herself make a sound. The ring was consuming her. It’d turned her world from night into a blinding white haze of pain. Sticky wetness ran between her fingers and her nose ran with something far thicker than mucus.

This was it. She was going to die.

The skin on her back cracked and tore, ripping fissures down her spine. Molly screamed again, a noise to rival the supersonic ring around her, and it must have listened. Her voice rose above the noise and she could hear her own pain. Her fingers pulled at her shoulder, desperate to get behind her, do something, anything, about that pain, but her nails only tore at her shirt and her fingers slicked with blood. It was indescribable, the hurt. It choked her as she collapsed into the dirt and leaves under her, careful in her delirium to fall to her side and not her back.

The only world Molly knew right then was pain. No forest, no motel, no fake FBI agents. Pain and a god-forsaken ringing in her ears. Except now it wasn’t so much an ice pick to her ears but the murmuring of voices, alien with their language but at the same time familiar.

If she didn’t move then her world wouldn’t shatter in hurt, her back wouldn’t tear apart. If she didn’t move she could almost make out what the voices were saying.

Dead leaves and pine needles crunched under her head as she moved it just a little. That same sound came from away from her, at a distance, in the rhythm of footsteps. Crunch, crunch, crunch.

There was no moving but there was seeing. In her line of sight was a pair of brown leather boots to the knee with heels that shouldn’t be worn in the woods. The murmuring voices were getting frantic and Molly could almost grasp what they were saying. So close.

“Well look what the archangels dragged in.”

Knees cracked as the woman squatted down and tilted her head to get her eyes in line with Molly’s hazy sight. Thick black hair tumbled over narrow shoulders, emerald eyes flashed black in the night and blood red lips curled into a sinister smile.

“We’ve been looking for you, princess.”

Before Molly could get her hand under her to push herself up, or even make a groan of acknowledgment, a pain so sharp it sucked the air from her lungs and made the world go black raced through her. Weak under layers of pain and slicked with more blood than she thought she could bleed, Molly finally realized what the voices were saying.

Run, they said. Run.

**~**

“You’ve lost her.”

Dean flinched and wobbled the wheel of the Impala, sending it swerving in the lane before be righted it and himself. With a tenses jaw he looked in the rearview mirror and saw Castiel’s placid face staring out the window at the dark nothing on the other side.

“What’d I say about that?” Dean said.

He nearly bristled. Damn, how he hated when Castiel just popped up out of nowhere. They’d been doing this with him long enough that he knew better. Did that change anything? Not a chance.

Sam turned to face the angel in the backseat. “We’ll find her. She kind of freaked when she found out about us after the diner and she booked. She couldn’t have gotten far.”

“Does she know?” Castiel asked. “What she is?”

“Didn’t even get that far,” Dean said as he kept his eyes on the road, occasionally scanning the roadside for any movement. There was nothing. “We should get out and look.”

“You should have brought her right to us.” It was a calm scold from the angel behind him and one that made his stomach clench. To holy rollers who made some crappy decisions. At least Dean was honest about his.

He shook his head. “She deserves to know. Make up her own mind.”

“We could have helped her.” Castiel was almost pleading.

“By punting her straight into heaven. That’s only helping you.”

“And this is your help?” Castiel asked.

“Cas, look,” Sam said, not looking at him this time. “We’ll find her. But she deserves to know what she’s being thrown into.”

Castiel licked his lips, a move that never seemed to actually wet them. The bags under his eyes were drawn and purple. He looked almost human in his worn out state. Even his suit look rumpled. The angel looked like he couldn’t be bothered with something so trivial. At least not right now.

“Your methods are proving ineffective,” Castiel said before blipping himself out of the car.

Dean slowed Baby onto the side of the moonlit road, cut the lights and killed the engine. The brothers sat in the dark for a minute, the only sounds the ticking of the engine as it cooled down and the occasional wheeze of wind as it whipped past the car, bleeding in through the windows.

Sam was the one to break the quiet, his voice soft and jagged, like it tripped before coming out. “He has a point, Dean.”

Dean nodded and pursed his lips. His hands gripped the steering wheel and his knuckles blanched white. “Yeah, he does. That doesn’t make him right.” He looked at Sammy, his jaded brother. How’d they end up trading places like this? He was supposed to be the black and white one, the one who just followed orders because that’s what you were supposed to do. Now Sammy was in his shoes and Dean was in Sam’s and he wasn’t digging this glimpse of himself. “The angels . . . they may have good intentions for her but it’s their terms or their terms. You know that. They’ve been chasing us with that forever it feels like. It sucks and you know it.”

Their eyes locked and Sam’s face twitched. Dean watched as Sam tried to form his thought into something comprehensible but only silent half words came out. Sam turned away and stared out the windshield and into the night, down the dark road before them.

“For once I don’t want it to be our problem. Just once have it be on someone else’s shoulders.”

Dean relaxed back into the seat. “I know. So do I. But I won’t be able to sleep handing the sheep over to the wolves and letting them deal with it.”

Sam’s jaw clenched. “No.”

Dean heard the Impala’s door squeak before he saw it swing out and Sam step out of the car. Dean did the same, walked around to stand next to his brother, and stared with him into the too-dark woods.

“Think she’s in there?” Sam asked.

“As good a shot as any.”

They breeched the edge of the woods and all sounds of nature seemed to silence, like someone pressed mute. Dean noticed it first and stopped walking, his eyebrows pulled down into a frown and his head cocked just slightly, listening. Sam stopped and pawed, stilled as if he were frozen.

“You hear that?” Dean asked, his voice a raspy whisper.

“No,” Sam replied.

“Exactly.”

A scream, shrill and terrified, ripped through the night, destroying the vacuum of silence. Both brothers jumped, momentarily jerked out of their nerves. And then they ran. The scream rang through the woods again and the brothers corrected their direction, trying to follow the horrifying sound. Dean slid on some dead leaves but carried on quickly as Sam sprinted ahead. It couldn’t be anyone else but the question was who had her?

Dean nearly slammed into Sam’s back as he came to a sudden stop between a small cluster of trees. Their panting lent noise to the night but underneath their loud breathing a shuddering sob followed. Amplified but it was from an unseen howler. Shuddering, gasping heaves played on, making it sound like the forest itself was crying and at any minute tears would rain down on them.

Sam was looking at his feet and it took a moment for Dean to realize his brother was saying his same. Sammy didn’t have to point; Dean just followed his gaze. On the ground, smeared along dead leaved and snapped twigs, was far too much blood. Sam had taken a step into it before reeling back. Splatter was on the toe of his boot. Christ, even the shape of the deadly smudge looked like Molly.

Dean felt the anger rise and clenched his jaw tight. It was Sam who spoke first.

“Are we too late?” It was barely a whisper but someone heard it to answer.

“Oh no. You’re just in time.”

Both of their heads snapped up and their eyes landed on the woman standing before them. Green eyes shone so bright they nearly glowed. With the red lipstick she almost looked like Christmas. From hell. Black hair, brown shirt, jeans, brown boots with heels that should have posted her to the ground where she stood. For a second her green eyes flashed black and Dean let the anger rise.

“Where the hell is she?” he growled.

“Don’t get testy now. “ She smiled and her teeth beamed in the moonlight. “It won’t help her any.”

Her hands caught Sam’s eye and he focused on her fingers as they dripped thick, dark blood onto the forest floor. Her thumb and pointer of her right hand methodically rubbed together, as if she were enjoying the feel of Molly’s life on her hands.

“What’d you do to her?” Sam grunted, his voice barely audible. But the demon heard him well enough.

“Oh don’t you worry your pretty little Winchester faces about that. She’s right where we want her.” The demon smiled again, her full lips spreading open in what would be a seductive way if she wasn’t pure evil.

Dean slid his hand to his back, underneath his jacket. The knife was right there. She was focused on Sam, her eyes taunting. Dean wrapped his fingers around the handle and slid the blade out to rest it just behind his leg.

“She’s alive, if that’s what you want to know.” Her eyes widened in mock concern but her fingers kept playing with the blood. “For how much longer . . .” she pouted and shrugged, “that’s up to her.”

With a sneer Dean lunged as another pain-filled scream shattered the night.


End file.
